A year ago, as the Rangers prepared to open the 2018-19 season, their outlook was bleak. The team was eight months into a rebuilding project that had led to many of the organization’s best and most well-respected players shipped out of town in exchange for draft picks and young prospects, and the locker room in training camp had a sort of shell-shocked feeling to it.
What a difference a year makes.
Now 20 months into their rebuild – or, as new team president John Davidson called it at his introductory news conference, their “build” – there is a pep in the Rangers’ step and an air of excitement in the locker room with the start of the 2019-20 season just a few days away.